


until the sun shines again

by AppleJuiz



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4x10 coda, Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Introspection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-01 13:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: She leans forward and rakes her hands through the sand. It feels like if she stops for a second she might not start up again.“You know I’ve done a lot of drugs, probably all of them actually but this is new,” she says. “This whole 'assholes of Christmas past, present, future' thing. I’ve gotta say, not a fan.”





	until the sun shines again

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, it's been almost a full week and I haven't recovered. Margo ripped my heart out of my chest. I love the idea of Margo representing parts of herself with the others and just went absolutely wild with it. I had a fantastic time writing this so I hope you enjoy reading it!!

The sun is disgustingly bright, oppressively beaming, scorching the sand beneath her fingers and heating Margo from the inside out.

 

She wipes the sweat off her face, scratching sand along her cheeks.

 

“You know it’s not nearly hot enough,” she grumbles, running her fingers through the sand, picking up a small black dot on her pinkie. 

 

“If you can’t stand the heat.” Lizard Fogg stands in front of her, not looking hot at all, decked in his three piece suit, hand in his pocket. 

 

“Is this gonna be a whole thing?” She asks, sitting back on her heels. “You douchebags are just gonna keep showing up and annoying me to death.”

 

“It certainly seems so,” Fogg says with a quirk of his eyebrows. 

 

“And you can’t help or anything? Just talk shit.”

 

“Well, I am only a fractal of your imagination.” 

 

She leans forward and rakes her hands through the sand. It feels like if she stops for a second she might not start up again. 

 

“You know I’ve done a lot of drugs, probably all of them actually but this is new,” she says. “This whole assholes of Christmas past, present, future thing. I’ve gotta say, not a fan.”

 

Dean Fogg shrugs and blinks up at the angry sun. 

 

“Life is like a game of poker. We’re dealt all types of hands. Whether or not you win comes from how you choose to play them.”

 

She gags, spots another dot and moves it carefully to the bag. There’s about two dozen grains scattered around the sack. They look like a colony of ants if the colony had its whole hill smudged out like a cigarette bud. 

 

“Jesus, is that really all the wisdom you’ve got?”

 

She would kill for a cigarette. Literally if she could find a way to kill fake Fogg she would do it in exchange for a cigarette. 

 

“My wisdom is your wisdom,” he says. 

 

“Embarrassing,” she says. “At least I have a future in writing Chinese cookies.”

 

She smiles at her little pile of sand because that’s something Eliot would say, probably with an airy endearment and a sardonic little grin.  _ Well, babe, at least you have a future in Chinese cookies.  _

 

“How about possessions and exorcisms? Any dumb cliches about that?” 

 

She looks up, but Fogg is gone. It’s just her and the sun and a never ending landscape of sand and sand and sand. 

 

“That’s what I thought,” she grumbles and skims her hands over the ground again. 

 

.

 

“You should try digging a hole.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

Her fingers feel numb. Her nose burns; she remembered an SPF spell about an hour too late. 

 

“It just makes sense, Margo.”

 

She refuses to even look at Lizard Alice. This is a fun one, ghost of annoyances past, present, and future. 

 

“I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I’m not even her, I’m you.” 

 

It’s been a long time since she’s seen Alice. 

 

“Fine. If you want to be stubborn, be stubborn.”

 

The last time she saw Alice was the time she wanted to kill Alice. Honestly, the temptation is still there. 

 

“I’m just trying to help you. Help us.”

 

She rolls her eyes. 

 

“What are you even supposed to be?” she asks. “My bitchiness.”

 

“Ha ha,” Lizard Alice says, dry as this goddamn desert, dry as real Alice. “I’m your logic.”

 

“Like hell you are.”

 

“Why else would I be telling you to dig a stupid hole?” she says exasperated. “The sand will be cooler, you might find water. Not to mention you could displace the other sand. Right now you’re just making the sand you’re working with more diluted.”

 

“Maybe that’s intentional.”

 

“Why would that be intentional!”

 

“To piss you off.”

 

Lizard Alice crosses her arms. “Really? You’re gonna jeopardize saving Eliot because you want to annoy me. That’s mature of you, Margo.”

 

There’s a rush of rage that crashes over her. She’s barely able to choke it back down.

 

“Eliot would approve,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

 

“I'm not even Alice! I’m you.”

 

“Well, me should know better than trying to appeal to me with you,” she says. Logically. “This is all your fault anyway.”

 

“That’s ridiculous and you know it,” Lizard Alice says, not angry, not indignant. Just says it. “If anything this is Eliot’s fault for shooting the goddamn monster.”

 

She forces herself to breath steadily. In through her nose, out through her mouth. 

 

“Get out,” she says and it’s so ice cold she almost feels refreshed. 

 

“I’m not even real. How would I-”

 

“Get out.”

 

The desert goes silent. 

 

She glances in the bag, at the thin dusting of black sand. She tracks over the surface of the sand and picks out another one. 

 

The air is still and quiet. She takes it to mean Alice is gone. 

 

.

 

“I don’t even know why you’re here,” she says. She lays back in the sand, spread eagle, staring up at the blue, blue sky. 

 

She hasn’t given up. She won’t give up. But it’s been hours and her brain is burning so she’s decided to formulate a break system.

 

Julia stands above her with a serenely calm face. 

 

“I don’t even know you,” she continues. “What would you even represent? My inner goddess?”

 

“Gross,” Lizard Julia says but smiles softly. 

 

“Yeah,” Margo says, shaking her head. “I’m a grown ass woman. I don’t need to personify my libido.”

 

“Plus I’m not even a goddess anymore,” She says. “So…”

 

“So who are you supposed to be?” 

 

“I dunno.”

 

“Are you supposed to tell me?” Margo asks with a sigh. “That’s what everyone else seems to want to do.”

 

“What do you need right now?” Julia asks. “That’s probably what I am. If we’re sticking to this whole spirit guide thing.”

 

“Well I need an air conditioned room and a gin and tonic,” she says. “You either of those?”

 

“Hmmm, don’t think so,” she says. She’s still grinning, looking soft and welcoming. Q’s best friend.

 

“Honestly at this point I’ll take some bad vodka? A strawberry daiquiri?”

 

“I’m probably not a psychological manifestation of alcohol,” she says and stares down at Margo, head tilted. 

 

“Fine,” she says and pushes herself back up with a grunt. “I guess you’re my infallible strength since I’m getting back up and continuing on in the face of all this adversity.”

 

There’s an inch or two of sand in the bag. She’s trying hard to see those inches and not the miles of empty canvas. 

 

She picks a black grain off the back of her arm and drops it in the bag. 

 

Julia is gone. 

 

“Does that mean I was right?” A wind gusts across a sand dune. “Because I was joking.”

 

.

 

“This is fun,” Fen says. 

 

“Oh yeah. It’s been a real hoot.” There’s sweat dripping into her eyes. She’d wipe it away but there’s sand crusted onto her hands and sweat on her fingers too. 

 

“It could be fun,” Fen offers. 

 

Fen certainly looks like she’s having fun, laid out on the sand, chin propped up in her hands. She looks like she should be at a sleepover in a Disney Channel Original Movie. 

 

“Maybe,” Margo concedes. “If I wasn’t sweaty and tired and pissed. And if Eliot’s life wasn’t at stake and I could use magic and it wasn’t hot as balls.”

 

“You know what this reminds me of,” Fen says, unheeded, kicking her feet up. “That time you went with your parents to Key West. You spent that whole week on the beach. Your first tankini.”

 

“Don’t remind me,” she grumbles. 

 

Key West is not a vacation story she usually tells. Ever tells, really. Not that she’s ever told Fen any stories.

 

But this isn’t really Fen. 

 

“You has so much fun,” Fen cooed. “Just playing in the sand and laying out in the sun.”

 

“Well this ain’t a beach trip, honey,” she says. 

 

“I know.” She sighs. “But it doesn’t have to be so serious. Time flies when you’re having fun. You could make a game out of it.”

 

“Great idea, Fen,” she says. “A game. How about every time I find a black grain of sand, I put it in the bag and then once the bag is full, I can go and save Eliot.”

 

Fen lets her head drop against the sand. She huffs out an exasperated breath that casts sand up all around and into her face, making her cough and cough. 

 

She’s a drug induced hallucination. 

 

“You okay?” Margo asks anyway, pausing to touch Fen’s shoulder. 

 

Fen nods, blowing her nose and expelling a few final weak coughs. 

 

“Ouch,” she says meekly, and somehow finds her way into a sheepish smile. 

 

Margo hates her brain and the fact that it knows her weaknesses and how sometimes her weakness is this. 

 

“What kind of game would you play?” She asks Lizard Fen, who is not real and doesn’t need to be comforted. 

 

Lizard Fen lights up anyway. 

 

“Well, um… you could count, too, and then every tenth one you could… do something,” she offers. “Um… or you could draw shapes… uh, some patterns in the sand. Oh! Maybe some words, some curse words, you’d like that.”

 

“Those are terrible ideas, Fen,” she says. 

 

“I know.” She leans her cheek against her fist. “I’ll try to think of some better ones.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

Fen stays with her for a while longer, humming something soft and sweet under her breath. When she slips away, it’s in the span of a blink. 

 

Margo looks over and she’s gone, not even an indent in the sand left behind because Fen was never there. She misses her anyway. 

 

.

 

“Which one even are you?” She asks Lizard Penny. She shields her eyes with her hand to look up at him. The sun is setting which means it’s finding new angles to glare in her eyes. 

 

“Not sure,” he says. “Both? I mean this is all up to you so whichever you prefer.”

 

“This is absolutely not up to me,” she scoffs. “Jesus I barely talk to real versions of you. The last thing I want is to have some deep emotional chat.”

 

“Well I’m here for some reason,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not going anywhere until you figure it out.”

 

She takes a sip of water and holds it in her mouth as long as she can. This time she’s rationing more carefully. 

 

“Hmmm, are you my sardonic humor?” She asks. He blinks at her. “My dazzling wit? My… I don’t know what do we even have in common?”

 

“We’re too good for this shit?” fake Penny offers. 

 

“Not bad,” she says. “Superiority complex?”

 

“I dunno, are you feel particularly superior right now?” 

 

“I’ll give you a guess,” she says. She screws the water bottle shut and sets it aside. 

 

“Did you think this is where you would end up?” He asks. 

 

“In general? Because there’s a lot of bullshit that’s happened these past few years that have been worse than this,” she says. “And I don’t plan on staying here any longer than I’d have to.”

 

“I guess I mean when you were crowned, either time, did you think you’d end up on your ass in the middle of desert talking to a bunch of hallucinations of people you can barely stand because you licked a lizard?”

 

“Well this is far from the first time Filory’s had a coup,” she says. “At least this time they didn’t even try to kill me.”

 

“Yeah cuz Fen’s in the throne,” he says. “And she doesn’t know how to be mean.”

 

“She’ll learn,” she says. 

 

“Or she’ll run the place into the ground,” he says with a shrug. 

 

“She’ll be fine. She’s been High King before.”

 

“Sure…”

 

“Stop,” she says. 

 

“What? I didn’t say anything,” he says, hands up defensively. 

 

“You were thinking it.”

 

“Oh so you’re the telepath now?”

 

“No but you’re me.” She sighs and pushes forward onto her hands and knees. 

 

“Well then we both know that you deserve to be king,” he says. “You love Fillory and you’re a better leader. Not afraid to get your hands dirty, literally.”

 

She turns around so the sun is at her back, dragging the bag with her. 

 

“It doesn’t matter what I deserve or however I feel about Fillory and how good a goddamn king I was,” she says. She takes a breath, scans the sands around her for any red. She pushes her hair out of her face. “What matters is saving Eliot.”

 

There’s no response. 

 

.

 

“It’s really taking you this long, huh?”

 

The sun is setting. The bag isn’t even a quarter full. 

 

“I can’t move any faster,” she grumbles. “I’m being precise.”

 

“You should have listened to Alice,” fake Kady says, shaking her head. 

 

“Well now I know you’re a hallucination,” she says. “You agreeing with Alice.”

 

“If you weren’t so vehemently intent on sabotaging yourself you might have actually been able to pull this off.”

 

“I don’t remember you being this much of a bitch,” she says, not deigning to look up from her work. 

 

“Well, you barely know me,” fake Kady says. 

 

“Fair enough. I’ve been a little busy these past few years though so…”

 

“Been a bit busy these past few weeks too.” Fake Kady picks at her nails. 

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

 

“Nothing. Nothing… just, you’re a little late to the party, aren’t you? It’s been weeks and what have you done to help Eliot at all?”

 

“I thought he was dead.”

 

“Yeah. You moved on pretty quick though.”

 

“Excuse me.”

 

“Well when my soulmate died, I almost ODed. Plus I tried to track him down in the underworld. And you… well you went a little nuts over a lizard.”

 

And now the lizard is making her nuts. 

 

“Well I’m here now.” 

 

“And taking your sweet time.”

 

She wipes her forehead off again and decides to ignore fake Kady. 

 

“You don’t think it’s even a little funny that out of everyone in the world, you’re given the quest that requires patience and calm,” she says. “Literally anyone would be better for this task than you. You once almost castrated Todd because he took to long picking a soda.”

 

“Look, Kady, we never really clicked, but I respect you. You do your own shit, you don’t bother me with it, that alone makes you better than half the people I know. But I’m tired, and it’s been a long day, so if you could shut up, maybe fuck off to whatever corner of my drug addled mind you demons are spawning from, that would be greatly appreciated.”

 

Kady sighs, pushing her hand through her curls. 

 

“Fine. I mean you were probably supposed to learn some lesson from me, but whatever, this is pretty boring anyway.”

 

“Thanks,” she says, and yet still a pang of loneliness shoots through her as the silence engulfs her again. 

 

.

 

Quentin shows up a few times. 

 

He never really says anything. He also is always sitting cross-legged next to her. Everyone else had just stood up there and watched her. (Except Fen who plopped down on the ground and sprawled out, leaned up a little against Margo’s side even though she couldn’t feel her, not really. But that was Fen.)   
  


She doesn’t think she could imagine Quentin looking down at her. Or maybe the whole criss-cross applesauce is too quintessential of a Coldwater contortion for her brain to pass up. 

 

He has a book, which… where did he even get a book. Sometimes it’s Fillory. Sometimes it’s her other childhood favorites, Harry Potter or some other fantasy drivel. 

 

He reads, out loud but under his breath, not to her but not not for her. 

 

He doesn’t spout life lessons or unsolicited advice. He’s just there, sitting and reading, keeping her silent company as the sun sets. 

 

She misses him, all his anxious energy and bottomless pit of hope and belief. She misses the early him too, the little nerd Eliot adopted, like a stray puppy they could drape a blanket over and snuggle up with when they got bored. 

 

She takes a break and watches him, his eyes darting across the pages, a subtle joy in his eyes that she hasn’t seen in quite some time. 

 

“So… my repressed nerd, right?” She asks. 

 

He glances up at her, his eyes flickering between her and the page like a physical stutter.

“Um… probably not,” he says. “I mean, if I’m some sort of spirit guide I’m not sure what use that would be.”

 

“So you don’t know who you are?” She asks. “Or why you’ve been sent to bother me?”

 

He shrugs. “Sorry. No clue.”

 

She sighs and takes a sip of water, glancing down at the bag, trying to guess what halfway is and whether or not she’s reached it. 

 

“You can’t give up,” he says, hands fidgeting over the book. “You know that, right?”

 

“Yeah, no shit, Q,” she says. “I’m not planning on it.”

 

“We’re all that he has,” he says, shaking his head. “And Fen too, but that’s still… different. We’re pretty much all that he has.”

 

“I know,” she says. She wants to reach out and grab his hand. 

 

“So we can’t-” he says looking frantic and worried.

 

“I know,” she says again. 

 

“We can’t screw this up,” he finishes. 

 

“We won’t,” she says. “Because we love him.”

 

And Lizard Quentin smiles like the little dope he is, kinda sheepish but genuine, always so genuine, not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, to paste every stitch of love he feels directly onto his face. 

 

“Yeah we do,” he says. 

 

And he’s fake, a facsimile created by her drugged and heat-stroked consciousness, so she might as well reach out and grab his hand anyway, squeeze it just a little. 

 

“Because he’s Eliot,” she says, nodding, glancing back over at her back of sand. 

 

“And how could we not.”

 

“How could anyone not,” she adds. And they share a small helpless sort of smile, not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time. Their Eliot smile.

 

The moon is rising. The air is cooling down. She breathes in and releases. 

 

“For Eliot,” she says, glancing over at Q one more time. He nods, firm and resolute but with eyes that glow, overflow with things she can’t ever say. 

 

She returns to the sand and Quentin reads on. 

 

.

 

“Hey.”

 

And she might as well stop working. She’s been dreading this one. 

 

“How’s it going?”

 

Because she’s been crunching the numbers and she knew it was coming but still… it was weird enough before, when Josh was there in the tent. She doesn’t need the distraction now. 

 

“So... are we just not gonna y’all? Again?” he asks. 

 

“I don’t have time for this,” she says. And wills him away because sometimes that seems to work.    
  


“C’mon,” he prods. “It’s two in the morning. You don’t want to get rid of any of that guilt that’s weighing you down?”

 

“Thought you were my conscience?” she says. 

 

“I could be both,” he offers. “Feel free to use me as a sounding board. Anything you want to get off your chest? Anything you think you might have done wrong?”

 

“If you’re my conscience, you should be the one telling me right?” she asks.

 

“Maybe,” he says. “I dunno. If I was you conscience, well, would you even recognize me?”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

He kneels down next to her with a grunt. 

 

“They don’t exactly call you King Margo the Morally Considerate,” he offers with a shrug. 

 

“Yeah, well, fuck that,” she says, setting the bag aside. (It has some weight to it and that blossoms like hope in her chest.) “I may not be Fen. Or Quentin. Or even Eliot. But I get shit done. And that’s what matters.”

 

“Is that what happened back there with the, uh, epic douchenozzle?” He asks, with extreme passivity. “Getting shit done?”

 

“You don’t get to be jealous or anything,” she says. “Because A. we never said what we are to each other and B. you’re not even real.”

 

He hums, mulling it over. 

 

She picks a grain of sand from beneath her nails. 

 

“Okay, but if I’m jealous about it and I’m you, doesn’t that just mean that you do feel guilty about it?” he offers, with a wry smug little grin. 

 

“I don’t,” she says. “I’m saving Eliot. I’d do a lot worse.”

 

“You have already, haven’t you?” he says with a tight frown. 

 

“What? Licking that lizard?” She almost laughs. 

 

“No. The first time. What you did to Fen.”

 

His words are like ice in her veins and the sun is too far gone at this point to offer her any warmth. 

 

“I’m not talking about this. I have work to do.”

 

“But you do feel guilty about that one, don’t you?”

 

“No,” she says fiercely and then closes her eyes like that will settle her, like it can soothe somehow the way this conversation is rubbing against her soul. “I don’t feel guilty because guess what, it saved Eliot. That’s all that matters.”

 

She digs her nails into the sand and scraps through it. 

 

“Okay,” Josh says, raising his hands in acquiescence. “Is there anything you do feel guilty about?”

 

“No,” she says. 

 

“C’mon, I’m here for a reason,” he says. 

 

She stares up at the stars, traces out the few constellations she knows. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

 

“What was that?”

 

“When I pushed you away. It was because… maybe we're something, maybe we could build something out of whatever this is, or maybe we were only meant to be the best sex of your goddamn life. But… Whatever we were, it was gonna be fun. It was going to make me happy, not sappy or different, but it was… it was gonna be a good time.”

 

“And you sabotaged it?” His voice is lower, softer, barely carried across on the breeze. 

 

“Because at the end of the day, Eliot is my soulmate,” she says. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. But to be happy without him, to fool around and have fun when he was gone, when he was dead… I can’t do that. I will never be able to do that. And I don’t regret what I said or what I did. But I am sorry that you got hurt along the way.”

 

She glances over, clenching her jaw to trap the rush of emotion in her throat. 

 

Josh was already gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I've ever written a fic with this many characters so hopefully I got their voices right. Please let me know what you think! I crave that sweet sweet validation so comments are much appreciated. Thanks for reading!!


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